It is the sixth month of the year. The common name for this month is June, a name derived from Juno, the Queen of the Olympians in Roman mythology corresponding to the Greek Hera. While occasionally one encounters a Christian who has a problem with the month’s name on the basis of this pagan origin, most of us are sensible enough to recognize that words take on new meanings, that “June” now simply means “the sixth month of the year”, and that one is in no way evoking the pagan goddess by calling the month after its common name. The more educated among us will also recognize that the kind of reasoning used to condemn those who call the month by its common name would also condemn the writers of the New Testament who employ the word “Hades” to refer to the place the Old Testament calls “Sheol” because of the similar concept – a dark, shadowy, underworld, inhabited by the spirits of the dead – even though “Hades” as a name for the underworld is borrowed from that of the god who ruled it in Greek mythology, the god the Romans called Pluto. A good rule to follow when trying to determine whether you are taking a principled stand for Christ or just being a nut is that if you are doing something that the Puritans, Jacobins, Bolsheviks, and Maoists liked doing, such as renaming everything, then you are probably just being a nut.
At any rate, June is certainly a better name than the
alternative name that so many now use for this month. The sort of people who identify themselves
by one of the letters in the alphabet soup – LGBTTQAEIOUandsometimesY – and
others, businesses and politicians mostly, who wish to be seen as supportive of
the alphabet soup gang, refer to it as Pride month. It was not that long ago that it was Pride
Week. Now it has grown into a whole
month. Originally there was a Gay
before the Pride but at some point this was dropped presumably because the
other letters in the alphabet soup had grown jealous of the G.
The irony of this, for orthodox Christians, of course, is
that of the two terms, Pride is by far the most objectionable. Gay, which in this context does not have its
older and, until well into the twentieth-century primary, meaning of
light-hearted, cheerful, and happy, but rather its more recent and as of late
sole sense of homosexual, denotes something that violates the standards of
orthodox moral theology on the basis of both explicit Scriptural passages
against it (Genesis 19, Leviticus 20, Romans 1, and Jude being the most obvious
examples) and its deviation from the exemplary pattern of a man leaving his
father and mother, being joined to his wife, and the two being one flesh. Pride, however, is the name of the worst of
all sins.
While the ancient Greeks did not have the same view of Pride
as orthodox Christianity they did, in a way, anticipate the Christian point of
view in their concept of hubris, which was a form of Pride. It
had various connotations depending upon context. In early Greek literature it frequently
designated words and acts by which men insulted and offended the gods with arrogant
boasting. Cassiopeia, queen of
Ethiopia, boasted that she and her daughter Andromeda were more beautiful than
the sea nymphs the Nereids, which brought upon her and her kingdom the wrath of
Poseidon. This was an example of this
sense of hubris. Numerous similar
examples could be given, in each of which the person who offended the gods with
his or her arrogance met with swift punishment, sometimes fatal, sometimes non-fatal
but permanent, often involving a transformation. The myth of Arachne whom Athena transformed
into a spider for boasting that she was a superior weaver is an example of the
latter sort. So, for that matter, is
basically every example of hubris related by Ovid in his Metamorphoses. Occasionally the
punishment was thwarted, at least in part, by another agent. In the aforementioned example of Cassiopeia,
Andromeda was as much an object of Neptune’s wrath as her mother and to spare
Ethiopia, Cassiopeia was told she would have to sacrifice Andromeda to a
sea-monster. The hero Perseus intervened
and rescued the princess whom he then married.
In Greek mythology, both hubris and the divine wrath that punished it,
like most abstract concepts were personified as divinities, Hubris and
Nemesis. A more general version of this
same basic concept, that arrogance brings about one’s downfall, also appears in
Greek mythology and literature of equal vintage. Think of the myth of Icarus, the son of
Daedelus, architect of the Labyrinth.
Daedelus, having offended his king, Minos of Crete, was imprisoned and
escaped the prison with his son, on wings he constructed of wax and
feathers. Icarus, ignoring his father’s
warnings, flew too high, the sun melted the wax, and he plummeted to his death. It can also be found illustrated, along
with other themes, in “The Tortoise and the Hare”, from Aesop’s Fables. Aesop lived the century after Homer and
Hesiod – he is believed to have been born only a few decades after the latter
died – and this particular of his fables is of unquestionable antiquity, having
been famously referenced, albeit with the details altered and with an entirely
different point, by Zeno of Elea in one of those delightful paradoxes “proving”
motion to be impossible.
The Greek poets and storytellers who related the above myths
stressed the offensiveness of mortal hubris to those above men, the gods. One of the most well-known definitions of
hubris to come down to us from ancient times is that of Aristotle. It comes from the second book of his Rhetoric, a work that both defines the
principles and rules and instructs in the art of persuasive speech. This is the section in which Aristotle is
exploring the usefulness of pathos –
emotion – both on the part of the speaker and the audience, in making an argument. His definition of hubris – which is
generally rendered “insult” in English translation of Rhetoric – emphasizes its offensiveness in the opposite direction
to that stressed by the ancient myths, i.e., to its human victims. As translated by J. H. Freese it says that
hubris “consists in causing injury or annoyance whereby the sufferer is
disgraced, not to obtain any other advantage for oneself besides the
performance of the act, but for one’s own pleasure”. At first glance, it seems almost as if
Aristotle were discussing something completely different from the hubris of
Greek mythology and, indeed, he obviously had the laws of his city-state Athens
in mind here. In Greek law in general,
hubris denoted a wide category of crimes.
The Athenian lawmakers had put more effort into defining the category
than most and in Athenian law hubris consisted of crimes that deliberately
inflicted shame upon their victims.
Some recent classical scholars have argued on the basis of this
definition that our entire traditional understanding of the Greek concept of
hubris is mistaken, an anachronistic reading of English usage and Christian
concepts back into ancient thought.
This, however, reads too much into this one passage of Aristotle. It is understandable that the legal
connotations of hubris, in which its effects on human victims would be
stressed, would be foremost in Aristotle’s mind in Rhetoric – consult Plato’s dialogues that feature Socrates
interacting with the Sophists, or for that matter Aristophanes’ lampooning of
Socrates himself in the Clouds, and
it will quickly become obvious, as in fact, it is self-evident, that the main
reason rhetoric teachers were in demand was because people wanted to win
lawsuits in court.
Aristotle was also the author of Poetics, the work that established the framework in which
theoretical discussion of drama, regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees
with Aristotle – and everything he wrote, from the basic unities to catharsis
has been subjected to rigorous debate - has been conducted ever since. While other forms of poetry such as Epic,
and of drama such as Comedy, are discussed, the bulk of Poetics, which is not a long work, pertains to tragedy. Aristotle, remember, lived in the period
immediately after tragedy had come to dominate the Greek theatre. Two of the great Athenian tragedians,
Sophocles and Euripides, had been contemporaries of Plato, Aristotle’s teacher,
and of Socrates, Plato’s teacher, while Aeschylus, the father of tragedy, had
lived into Socrates’ youth. Tragedy,
according to Aristotle, was a form of dramatic poetry that like Epic but in
contrast with Comedy, involved an imitation (Gk. Mimesis) of the higher sort of
character in serious events or actions, the purpose of which was to achieve a cleansing
or purging (Gk. Catharsis) of the emotions, particularly of the fear and pity
that the play was supposed to produce in the audience through empathy with the
characters. It had six parts – Plot,
Character, Diction, Thought, Spectacle, and Song – and of these, the Plot, the
most important of the six parts, had to involve a Reversal (Gk. Peripeteia) of
fortune and circumstance from good to bad, brought about not by vice or
depravity, but by a great error, weakness or failing (Gk. Hamartia) of the
hero. Hubris was the most common
example of this Hamartia. Hubris, as an
Aristotelean tragic hero’s “fatal flaw”, is more recognizable as the hubris of
Greek mythology than the legal hubris of the Rhetoric. The tragedies of
Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were, for the most part, retellings – in the
case of Euripides often radical re-interpretations – of the older Greek
myths.
The Greek view, as I pointed out at the beginning of this
discussion, anticipated the Christian view but was not identical to it. This is evident in Aristotle. By contrasting Hamartia, the general
category to which hubris belonged, with vice and depravity, he spoke of it in
terms that had a less harsh moral tone to them, although, interestingly, about a
century after Aristotle, the Jewish scribes who translated the LXX for Ptolemy
II Philadelphus would use it to render Chata, the basic Hebrew word for “sin”
in the Old Testament, which led to it becoming the main word for “sin” in the
New Testament. Hamartiology is the designation of the study
of the doctrine of sin in Christian theology.
It was the natural translation choice – both Chata and Hamartia have the
same root meaning of an archer missing the mark he is aiming for – but when it
comes to usage, Chata in the Old Testament has the same general connotations
and tone that “sin” does in English, which is not true of Hamartia in Greek
literature prior to the LXX and New Testament.
Thus Aristotle, using Hamartia, “missing the mark”, to mean the “mistake”
“error” or “flaw” that brings about the Peripetia of his tragic hero – someone,
whom he says, should be depicted as neither exceptionally virtuous or villainous
– contrasts it with moral depravity and vice, whereas St. Paul, also alluding
to the basic meaning of the word when he writes that “all have sinned and fall
short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), does so after making the point with a
series of Old Testament quotations that emphasize the depravity of the sinner (“their
throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have used deceit; the
poison of asps is under their lips: Whose mouth if full of cursing and
bitterness: Their feet are swift to shed blood:” etc.).
Neither Aristotle nor the ancient Greeks in general thought
of Pride in general in the same terms in which they thought of Hubris. The former they thought of as a good thing,
the latter as Pride taken to excess.
Excess, of course, was fundamental to Aristotle’s entire concept of
Vice, just as moderation was to his view of Virtue. A Virtue was the middle path of moderation
between two Vices of excess. Indeed, in
Book IV of his Nicomachean Ethics, he
speaks of Pride as the Virtue (Gk. Arete) that falls between a false humility
and excessive Pride. Spoken of in these
terms, it means the acknowledgement of one’s own strengths, accomplishments,
etc. as they actually are, as opposed to speaking of them as if they were less
than they are in reality (false humility) or laying claim to greater strengths
and accomplishments than one actually possesses (excessive Pride). From this perspective, since people’s
strengths etc. can be ranked in terms of best, various degrees of better, good,
bad, various degrees of worse, and worst, for the person who actually belongs
to the top rank of best to acknowledge such is ordinary Pride and not Hubris.
The Holy Scriptures, by contrast, never speak of Pride
positively, in either Testament. Nor do
they ever speak negatively of humility.
To be fair to Aristotle, it should be noted that they never use these
words with precisely the same sense that he gave them either and that the Scriptures
do indeed place a high premium on speaking of things as they are. The closest thing to even a neutral use of
the word “Pride” in the Bible that I could find is Job 41:15, which describes
the scales of Leviathan as his pride, although, since the sea-serpent discussed
in that chapter almost certainly represents Satan, this may not be as neutral a
usage as it seems. Pride is the sin that
brought about the devil’s fall. This is
explicitly stated by St. Paul in the New Testament (I Tim. 3:6), and if the traditional
interpretation of Isaiah 14:12-15 and Ezekiel 28:12-19 as God speaking to the
devil through the human representatives of the kings of Babylon and Tyre and describing
his fall is accurate (1), it is found in the Old Testament as well. The Isaiah passage does not use the word
Pride, but it is clearly the motive of the actions described. The expression “thine heart was lifted up”
in Ezekiel 28:17 essentially means “you became proud”. Just as Pride led to Satan’s own downfall,
it was the means he used to bring about the Fall of Man as well. He tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit by
telling her that the only reason God had forbidden it to her and Adam was
because it would open their eyes, giving them the God-like knowledge of good
and evil, leading her to distrust God and to desire the forbidden God-like
knowledge. The Temptation worked by
stoking and appealing to Pride. When
later, Satan unsuccessfully tempted Jesus, each of the three Temptations was an
enticement to act based on Pride in one form or another.
The Bible uses the word Pride to characterize the wicked (Job.
35:12, Ps. 10:2) and the foolish (Prov. 14:13). It leads, like hubris in Greek thought, to a
fall and to destruction (Prov. 16:8) and brings God’s judgement both upon
Israel (Is. 9:8-12, Jer. 13:9)and the nations around her, (Ez. 30:6, Zech. 9:6)
including or perhaps especially the powerful ones that she relies upon instead
of God and which He uses as a scourge against her (Zech. 10:11). It deceives (Obad. 1:3) and prevents the
wicked from seeking God (Ps. 10:4). To
fear the Lord is to hate Pride (Prov. 8:13).
Interestingly, it is said to lead to shame and being brought low in
contrast with humility and (voluntary) lowliness leading to wisdom and honour (Prov.
11:2, 29:23), which may be where Greek and Biblical thought on the subject were
the furthest removed from each other. Very
interestingly, considering the occasion of this essay, is that Ezekiel gave it
as the first example in his list of the iniquities that brought judgement upon
Sodom (Ez. 16:49). Jesus spoke of Pride
as one of the things that comes from out of the heart and defiles a man (Mk.
7:22). The cognate adjective proud is
used less frequently and no differently.
It is only when it comes to the conceptually related verbs “boast”
and “glory” that we find references that are positive and these generally speak
of a “boasting” or “glorying” that is fundamentally the opposite of the kind
that would be associated with Pride.
Here are a few examples:
My soul shall make her
boast in the LORD: the humble shall hear thereof, and be glad. (Ps. 34:2)
In God we boast all
the day long, and praise thy name forever. Selah. (Ps. 44:8)
God forbid that I
should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is
crucified unto me and I unto the world. (Gal. 6:14)
While Greek thought with regards to hubris approached
Biblical thought regarding Pride, it fell short. The Greeks worshipped gods whom they thought
of as being superior to mortal men in terms of strength and power but generally
not in terms of righteousness and justice.
Indeed, it could be argued that Greek mythology generally presented the
gods as men’s moral inferiors. There
are some exceptions to this among the ancient writers, but it was noticeable enough
to attract attention, comment, and attempts at reform from Plato and Euripides
among others. Something like hubris
that offended such deities, therefore, simply could not be thought of in the
same terms as that which offends the True and Living God of the Bible, Who is
man’s superior in every way, in the superlative and not just the comparative degree. Since the Scriptures tell us that men were
created Innocent by the True and Living God, but fell into sin which offends
against Him Who is Supremely Perfect in His Holiness, Righteousness, and
Justice, it can hardly be surprising that the same Scriptures universally condemn
human Pride, and counsel sinful men to adopt an attitude of brokenness,
contrition, and humility, warning them that if they lift themselves up in Pride
He will bring them low, but promising that if they humble themselves in the
sight of the LORD, He will lift them up (Jas. 4:10). The Church’s traditional identification of
Superbia – Pride – as the source of all other sin, the worst and deadliest of
the Seven Deadly Sins, represents Scriptural thought faithfully. In this as in many other areas, ancient Greek
thought demonstrates how far human philosophy can go relying upon General
Revelation, but also how far it falls short of the Special Revelation of the
Scriptures and the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. This is the Hamartia of human philosophy.
When it comes to the Pride that is contemporarily celebrated
on the sixth month of the year, however, ancient Greek thought would condemn it
as much as Christian thought. This might
seem paradoxical, in that the ancient Greeks were famously tolerant of some of
the sexual conduct associated with Pride month, but as noted earlier the
modifier which once qualified Pride was dropped years ago, the reference to the
lesser sin which the Greeks tolerated being eliminated leaving only the name of
the worst of all sins. The arrogance of
the current demands of the intolerant Left that everybody pay homage to the
celebration or face “cancellation” is such than any of the ancient Greeks would
have recognized it as hubris.
It is best that we stick to using the name of Jupiter’s wife
for this month. Pagan in origin,
thought it undoubtedly be, it is far less objectionable than the other
alternative.
